The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus, an image forming method, and a program.
As thermal transfer printers, sublimation type, melt type, and thermal type printers have been mainly used. However, in the thermal transfer printers, there may be a case where due to minute unevenness on an image surface, the glossiness of the image is damaged. Therefore, in the related art, the image surface is flattened by heating and pressing a flat surface against the image surface, thereby enhancing the glossiness of the image.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-248520, an image forming method for enhancing the glossiness of an image using a thermal transfer sheet having an ink layer and a protective material layer, and a reforming sheet having a printing opening portion and a surface property reforming portion, is disclosed.
In this method, first, the reforming sheet is interposed between a recording medium and the thermal transfer sheet. Next, a printing layer (image) is formed by transferring the ink layer onto the recording medium via the printing opening portion, and a protective layer is formed onto the printing layer by transferring the protective material layer onto the recording medium. In addition, the thermal transfer sheet and the reforming sheet are aligned, and a flat surface of the surface property reforming portion is caused to come into pressing contact with the protective layer via a protective material layer area after the protective material layer is transferred (hereinafter, referred to as a transferred protective material layer) and heated, such that the surface properties of the protective layer are reformed.